With a pang of regret he
noticed how thin her face was, and how white,--so pale that the color
had fled even from the sweet, sensitive lips which smiled ever so
faintly at him, and then at the nurse, as the latter made the quiet
suggestion that she try to keep her eyes always fixed on the pad of
gauze, and not let them be drawn away from it if she could possibly help
it.

But at first she could not, and so she saw the pitiful little head,
stripped of its golden crown, first covered with a clinging veil of wet
cloth, over which, from behind the ears to the top of the forehead, a
circular band of rubber tubing was adjusted and drawn tight into the
flesh--"to stop the blood, like I did for grandpappy when he cut his
arm," she thought. Then the head was gently raised and settled into
position on the sand-filled pillow, which cradled it firmly.

Only the gurgling breath of the mercifully unconscious baby, and the
crackling of the fire, broke the silence as the surgeon adjusted and
posed his patient's head, as an artist would his model's.

A piercing light flashed before the girl's eyes, and she saw that now
Miss Merriman held a strange-looking black tube, which shed a circle of
concentrated sunshine on the gauze-covered head. It was her first
experience with a flashlight, and she marvelled at its power.

Now there came another dart of light, thin and fleeting, and she knew
that a knife was poised in mid-air. Involuntarily she closed her eyes
tight; a shudder ran through her. Donald's voice spoke impersonally, and
steadied her.

"I shall expose the third left frontal convolution of the brain through
the fronto-parietal bone, and, in making the osteoplastic flap, I intend
to leave a wide working margin above the size of the opening which may
actually be necessary in order to reach the growth. It has got to be
fully exposed at once. I can't afford to delay, under the
circumstances."

The gleam of the scalpel held her unwilling gaze with the fascination of
horror; she drew her breath with a sound between a shudder and a sigh as
it descended....

"I _must_ keep my eyes on the ether pad," came the command from her
whirling brain.

Many nights thereafter, Rose was to start up from troubled sleep with
strange sounds and stranger words echoing in her brain--words like
"bevelled trephines," "Hudson forceps," "elevators," "Horsley's wax,"
"rongeurs," "clips" and "sponges,"--but during the actual operation she
was scarcely co